There has been a growing interest to create eco-friendly materials from synthetic and biological materials exhibiting multifunctional characteristics. Ideally, these materials would be engineered using renewable resources and processing strategies that reflect the “green” chemistry of biological systems. There have been many previous attempts to develop biomimetic materials from naturally occurring products, such that the products retain desirable functional and physical properties that would permit their usage across broad product groups. However, there are relatively few successes. There is accordingly an ongoing and unmet need to develop novel materials that can be produced easily from renewable resources, and which would offer a broad array of useful applications. The present invention meets these and other needs.